probably you are right. My old philosophical books for the moment are the only filter to find an interpretation and to survive in Asia. But I agree it’s not enough. I take your objection seriously.
This statement is not dealing with the technical content of the comment, but rather on the credibility of Prof Buehler as a researcher, which lay person (or even researcher not working in the area) may not know.
The move is now on the Indonesia corner – will this incite an investigation and discourse in the issue? ‘Working together’ works both ways; my feeling is that the current govt (Foreign Affairs in particular) will just choose to ignore it and carry on with their sosialita workstyle as usual.
This is a good move, especially in cementing the scholarly credibility of Prof Buehler. While the general reaction is to be expected, I am more surprised at the reaction of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which did not even bother to follow up on this allegation other than writing a letter and denying. You can tell that consultants are not being involved, ha!
No Husserl, no Adorno, no Derrida, no Zizek, none of whom have absolutely anything to do with Southeast Asia. Adamo, more hubris and the best philosophy you can learn, at this stage, is the economy of speech.
I understand now what you mean with the idea of an all-embracing multilingual culture. I recognize it in my 8 years old daughter, who is already able to speak several languages and to adapt to several cultural contexts, between Europe and Asia. I recognize it in my Muslim friend who decided to do an exception and drink a beer with me yesterday night in honor of our friendship. I also understand your concern about the arrogance and intolerance of some cultures who want to impose their values.
But I’m still convinced that a universal culture embracing all the cultures would kill any difference. It’s like to say that it would be possible to find a common painting language that can unify the expressivity of Matisse, Picasso and van Gogh. Differences, diversity do exist. A minimum of relativism is necessary. It would be possible that an artist could combine different styles or can find an enrichment following another styles, but not all the combinations are possible. A universal painting would be a white canvas.
The red light in Amsterdam is not only a conventional sign, it’s also a symbol that has a history, it can evoke a feeling of erotic passion, a sense of prohibit, it can be a symbol of regality … all possible interpretations (not necessary linguistic) that depends on the history of a specific cultural context. A symbol is not a metaphor (an image associated to a meaning) but an explosion of images and interpretations that finds its sense only at the cultural level (at the level of an intersubjective community with a complex history). That’s why a logic of evidence or a linguistic theory is not enough to explore (or to judge) a culture, where the communications is based on motives and not causes (this difference is well explained by Husserl).
Despite this relativism, I do believe – in response of your request of evidence – that there’s a way to speak about authenticity at the cultural level. I was travelling in Kalimantan last year and I noticed that all the new buildings of the local administration where using exactly the same shape, with the same type of arch on the roof. I asked an architect why there were no variations on that specific style and I discovered that the reason is because the administration is imposing it, to preserve the Dayak identity. This is an example how to put boundaries on a culture. In this article it’s well explained how cultures and communities are more and more separated by political and religious boundaries and how those boundaries were imposed by the colonialism in the past. Well, my radical thesis is that a culture with boundaries would lose its authenticity not having the possibility to renew itself and to be enriched through the dialogue and the integration with other cultures.
By the way … I hope my friend will abandon again his boundaries tonight and will offer another beer …
The Thai King was placed and empowered by American anti-communism and supported in his right wing murderous policies by the military and Sino Thai Capitalists.Thais need to finish 1932 the end of monarchy absolutely by any means necessary or remain deluded subjects
The Thai King is a right wing monster created by America late 1950s anti-communism and Sino-Thai Capitalists and the military.He and his son need to be overthrown by the BRN and ethnic peoples
Mythai #1, thanks, but I cannot afford a holiday right now! but on a serious note, as we know 112 has been used against against anyone for whatever reason. Now there is Article 44. Not even the US Ambassador is beyond the reach of the Thai falange, or poor regional students protesting against military corruption (at “corruption” park)…even a sick student dragged from a hospital bed. It could be a joke but it is too serious.
The old perennial debate on integration vs assimilation exemplified in Europe by the Turks in Germany whereas ghetto-isation that Trevor Phillips, former chair of Commission for Racial Equality (CRE) UK, referred to leads to segregated communities and schools, ignorance, misunderstanding and inevitably racial riots especially during a depression in the economy now even in a growing economy compounded by ‘identity politics’.
Adamo, a red light over a street doorway may have different meanings in Amsterdam and Beijing. Knowledge of the diversity of its meanings in different places and at different times is a property of the big culture that embraces them all. It’s the big culture that saves us from misunderstanding. The fact that the colour red is light with a wavelength at about 700 nm also belongs to that big multilingual culture.
Logic is only a class of linguistic conventions that people use to help prevent misunderstandings in communication. It helps bring people together in mutually satisfactory relationships. Seeking out critical evidence and looking at it together (the experimental method) is the most powerful method of bringing people to a common belief. It sure beats punishing people till they agree with you. Throwing aside passionately held beliefs that have no basis in evidence is a prerequisite for peace in the world.
Actually, you and I, and all the people who contribute to New Mandala are servants of the big, all-embracing multilingual culture that I’m talking about. Most of us just haven’t thought about it that way.
I live in northern Thailand, a thoroughly Red region. Yet my Redshirt friends, and 80% of Thais, approve of the work the current government is doing.
Promotion of ‘democracy’ for developing nations is misplaced: democracy kills development.
This article is absolutely brilliant and the most insightful I have ever read so far on the subject.
Thank you Dr. Taylor for a magnificent achievement.
“There is no middle ground remaining in Thailand, no platform for dialogue or impartiality.”
That is very true. I was told on Wednesday that the President of Mahidol University last week demanded that all Deans and Department Heads sign a loyalty oath to the NCPO. Faculty were not required to sign, but they were asked to sign another statement honoring the King’s contributions to Thai society on his birthday. There is little room left for even very limited academic freedom, discussion, or dissent.
Supposedly one of the aims of the junta was to bring reconciliation to the Thai people, but no mechanism has ever been established for the voice of the people to be expressed, and none appears to be envisioned. As for academics who wish to become part of the dialogue for reform process, they must first pass a litmus test of loyalty to the regime
Indeed, this stamping out of the middle ground position is the greatest danger for the future, because the fascist amaat movement is eliminating the possibility for any dialogue or reconciliation between the majority of Red Shirts and Peua Thai supporters who are being completely suppressed in the countryside, and the Bangkok falange, described as “an alliance of central bureaucratic elites, political representatives of the middle class, reactionary (pro-Prem Tinsulanond) elements in civil society, traditional network mafias, and ultra-conservative military factions with close ties to the royalist establishment.”
For that matter, they are eliminating the possibility for dialogue with the academic community who are not regime loyalists or supporters, but are not Red Shirt supporters either. The anti-corruption student protests appear to have originated outside of the UDD network, but they are being arrested or detained for merely raising issues about corruption in the military regime.
As an example of how the military have taken a one-sided approach, Dr. Titipol at the FCCT meeting last Wednesday told the story of a Red Shirt supporter who owns a garage in Ubon Ratchatani. The military commanders have ordered all military personnel at the nearby base to remove stickers advertising her garage from their cars, lest they be identified as “Red Shirt supporters.” Anyone with any UDD or Peua Thai sympathies is seen as the enemy.
It is a “winner takes all” strategy that cannot persist all that long into the future. I predict as the harsh prison sentences (28 years for Lese Majeste; life in prison for arson in Ubon for burning down the provincial hall, which was changed from a one-year prison sentence) and repression of free speech and assembly will further the embitterment and hatred that the Red Shirts already feel.
Eventually, large scale peaceful protests will erupt in places like Khon Kaen and Chiang Mai. They will probably be brutally reppressed by the military regime. Depending upon the number of casualties and mass arrests that result, I believe it is possible that the troops in the north and northeast will eventually disobey orders, and turn their guns on their officers. My experience with past events in Thailand (1973, 1976, 1992) suggest that a violent turn of events is more likely than the indefinite perpetuation of this lengthy military regime. I hope that I am incorrect in this assessment.
I don’t agree. A culture is not based on a propositional logic, it’s not a scientific theory that can be tested. It’s based on motives and symbols with their own history, not causes and effects. The red colour, for example, may have different meanings in different cultures. This meaning can be understood directly if you belongs to the same community with the same culture. To understand other cultures it’s necessary a critical approach that put “in bracket” your own culture. The result can be an enrichment but also, in the worst case, the ascertainment that a dialogue is impossible.
The idea of big a multilingual cultures sounds to me like a cultural dictatorships that kills any difference.
I’m aware that the Todorov’s sentence I mentioned before is too much theoretically oriented and maybe too much related to the Euro (Western)-centric world view. But I found it coherent with the second positive meaning of pluralism described in this article.
The trouble with multiculturalism or pluralism, or whatever you like to call it, is that if one culture says X is right and another says X is wrong, you have to agree with the proposition X is both right and wrong. You have to throw logic to the winds. And while you’re at it you have to throw science to the winds as well. Everybody’s opinion is right. Such fundamental weakness is fatal to any culture.
Better a big single but multilingual culture that allows one to look critically: that embraces the richness and beauty present in all the world’s cultures, and rejects their illogic, their passionate belief without evidence, their intolerance and punitive control, their inequality and injustice, and their environmental destruction. The belief that the only culture one is permitted to criticise is one’s own is silly. Everything must be put to the test.
Brilliant article James, however a word of caution. Don’t holiday in Thailand for a while. The fascists are courting “China” and Article 112 has been completely revived, as a fascist tool.
Excellent analysis that opened my eyes for many aspects. To support the second meaning of pluralism I would like to mention here a sentence of Todorov, from his essay “Les morales de l’histoire”. I try to translate it: “integration is needed if we want to speak about a complex culture, and not simply coexistence of two autonomous traditions side by side; but the integrating culture (thus the dominant one) should, without losing its identity, enrich itself with the contribution of the integrated culture, discovering its functioning and not the simple evidence”. A non-conflictual coexistence without integration is possible only “with the maximum ignorance of each other” (and this is the first meaning of pluralism).
The passage I quoted came from Anderson’s preface to “A Preliminary Analysis of the October 1, 1965, Coup in Indonesia”, which was published in 1971 without the preface. The preface, only two or three pages long, sets the scene for that report rather than being specifically a paper on Sukarno.
In another passage, Anderson switches from his first base in the Nagarakrtagama to the wayang: “As the lakon is now being performed in the Capital, the long-awaited civil war, Bratayuda Joyobinangun, is now at an end. The Left Faction has been cut down (uprooted?) to the last or next to last man. In the abandoned Palace, a balding Suyudono bewails the vanishing of his former omnipotence. In the corridors a twittering Durno awaits the vengeance of the victors. The Right Faction have taken control of the contested kingdom, their triumph secured for good and all…”
Suyudono is Sukarno, while Durno is Dr Subandrio. In his “Mythology and the Tolerance of the Javanese”, published in 1965, Anderson had introduced Suyudono (or Sujudana) as ‘King of Ngastina, most powerful and glittering of the ancient mythological Javanese capitals. He is a great monarch, yet fated to destroy himself and his house’. Re Durno (Durna), Anderson writes ‘the tendency in wayang today is to portray him as a half-sinister, half-comic figure, but this is not the older, traditional perspective. He was then Kresna’s great adversary, but with the Gods against him and without Kresna’s divinity’.
The student demonstrators of 1966 who denounced Subandrio as ‘Durno’ were clearly influenced by the latter-day wayang view of that character.
The passages I have quoted are the only ones relating to Sukarno.
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Pluralism imperiled in Southeast Asia
probably you are right. My old philosophical books for the moment are the only filter to find an interpretation and to survive in Asia. But I agree it’s not enough. I take your objection seriously.
Statement of support for Michael Buehler
This statement is not dealing with the technical content of the comment, but rather on the credibility of Prof Buehler as a researcher, which lay person (or even researcher not working in the area) may not know.
The move is now on the Indonesia corner – will this incite an investigation and discourse in the issue? ‘Working together’ works both ways; my feeling is that the current govt (Foreign Affairs in particular) will just choose to ignore it and carry on with their sosialita workstyle as usual.
Statement of support for Michael Buehler
This is a good move, especially in cementing the scholarly credibility of Prof Buehler. While the general reaction is to be expected, I am more surprised at the reaction of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which did not even bother to follow up on this allegation other than writing a letter and denying. You can tell that consultants are not being involved, ha!
Pluralism imperiled in Southeast Asia
No Husserl, no Adorno, no Derrida, no Zizek, none of whom have absolutely anything to do with Southeast Asia. Adamo, more hubris and the best philosophy you can learn, at this stage, is the economy of speech.
Pluralism imperiled in Southeast Asia
I understand now what you mean with the idea of an all-embracing multilingual culture. I recognize it in my 8 years old daughter, who is already able to speak several languages and to adapt to several cultural contexts, between Europe and Asia. I recognize it in my Muslim friend who decided to do an exception and drink a beer with me yesterday night in honor of our friendship. I also understand your concern about the arrogance and intolerance of some cultures who want to impose their values.
But I’m still convinced that a universal culture embracing all the cultures would kill any difference. It’s like to say that it would be possible to find a common painting language that can unify the expressivity of Matisse, Picasso and van Gogh. Differences, diversity do exist. A minimum of relativism is necessary. It would be possible that an artist could combine different styles or can find an enrichment following another styles, but not all the combinations are possible. A universal painting would be a white canvas.
The red light in Amsterdam is not only a conventional sign, it’s also a symbol that has a history, it can evoke a feeling of erotic passion, a sense of prohibit, it can be a symbol of regality … all possible interpretations (not necessary linguistic) that depends on the history of a specific cultural context. A symbol is not a metaphor (an image associated to a meaning) but an explosion of images and interpretations that finds its sense only at the cultural level (at the level of an intersubjective community with a complex history). That’s why a logic of evidence or a linguistic theory is not enough to explore (or to judge) a culture, where the communications is based on motives and not causes (this difference is well explained by Husserl).
Despite this relativism, I do believe – in response of your request of evidence – that there’s a way to speak about authenticity at the cultural level. I was travelling in Kalimantan last year and I noticed that all the new buildings of the local administration where using exactly the same shape, with the same type of arch on the roof. I asked an architect why there were no variations on that specific style and I discovered that the reason is because the administration is imposing it, to preserve the Dayak identity. This is an example how to put boundaries on a culture. In this article it’s well explained how cultures and communities are more and more separated by political and religious boundaries and how those boundaries were imposed by the colonialism in the past. Well, my radical thesis is that a culture with boundaries would lose its authenticity not having the possibility to renew itself and to be enriched through the dialogue and the integration with other cultures.
By the way … I hope my friend will abandon again his boundaries tonight and will offer another beer …
A state of madness
The Thai King was placed and empowered by American anti-communism and supported in his right wing murderous policies by the military and Sino Thai Capitalists.Thais need to finish 1932 the end of monarchy absolutely by any means necessary or remain deluded subjects
A state of madness
The Thai King is a right wing monster created by America late 1950s anti-communism and Sino-Thai Capitalists and the military.He and his son need to be overthrown by the BRN and ethnic peoples
A state of madness
Mythai #1, thanks, but I cannot afford a holiday right now! but on a serious note, as we know 112 has been used against against anyone for whatever reason. Now there is Article 44. Not even the US Ambassador is beyond the reach of the Thai falange, or poor regional students protesting against military corruption (at “corruption” park)…even a sick student dragged from a hospital bed. It could be a joke but it is too serious.
Pluralism imperiled in Southeast Asia
The xxx sign you see everywhere in Amsterdam sure has a different meaning from one in England or in Zanzibar for that matter.
Pluralism imperiled in Southeast Asia
The old perennial debate on integration vs assimilation exemplified in Europe by the Turks in Germany whereas ghetto-isation that Trevor Phillips, former chair of Commission for Racial Equality (CRE) UK, referred to leads to segregated communities and schools, ignorance, misunderstanding and inevitably racial riots especially during a depression in the economy now even in a growing economy compounded by ‘identity politics’.
Pluralism imperiled in Southeast Asia
Adamo, a red light over a street doorway may have different meanings in Amsterdam and Beijing. Knowledge of the diversity of its meanings in different places and at different times is a property of the big culture that embraces them all. It’s the big culture that saves us from misunderstanding. The fact that the colour red is light with a wavelength at about 700 nm also belongs to that big multilingual culture.
Logic is only a class of linguistic conventions that people use to help prevent misunderstandings in communication. It helps bring people together in mutually satisfactory relationships. Seeking out critical evidence and looking at it together (the experimental method) is the most powerful method of bringing people to a common belief. It sure beats punishing people till they agree with you. Throwing aside passionately held beliefs that have no basis in evidence is a prerequisite for peace in the world.
Actually, you and I, and all the people who contribute to New Mandala are servants of the big, all-embracing multilingual culture that I’m talking about. Most of us just haven’t thought about it that way.
A state of madness
I live in northern Thailand, a thoroughly Red region. Yet my Redshirt friends, and 80% of Thais, approve of the work the current government is doing.
Promotion of ‘democracy’ for developing nations is misplaced: democracy kills development.
A state of madness
This article is absolutely brilliant and the most insightful I have ever read so far on the subject.
Thank you Dr. Taylor for a magnificent achievement.
A state of madness
“There is no middle ground remaining in Thailand, no platform for dialogue or impartiality.”
That is very true. I was told on Wednesday that the President of Mahidol University last week demanded that all Deans and Department Heads sign a loyalty oath to the NCPO. Faculty were not required to sign, but they were asked to sign another statement honoring the King’s contributions to Thai society on his birthday. There is little room left for even very limited academic freedom, discussion, or dissent.
Supposedly one of the aims of the junta was to bring reconciliation to the Thai people, but no mechanism has ever been established for the voice of the people to be expressed, and none appears to be envisioned. As for academics who wish to become part of the dialogue for reform process, they must first pass a litmus test of loyalty to the regime
Indeed, this stamping out of the middle ground position is the greatest danger for the future, because the fascist amaat movement is eliminating the possibility for any dialogue or reconciliation between the majority of Red Shirts and Peua Thai supporters who are being completely suppressed in the countryside, and the Bangkok falange, described as “an alliance of central bureaucratic elites, political representatives of the middle class, reactionary (pro-Prem Tinsulanond) elements in civil society, traditional network mafias, and ultra-conservative military factions with close ties to the royalist establishment.”
For that matter, they are eliminating the possibility for dialogue with the academic community who are not regime loyalists or supporters, but are not Red Shirt supporters either. The anti-corruption student protests appear to have originated outside of the UDD network, but they are being arrested or detained for merely raising issues about corruption in the military regime.
As an example of how the military have taken a one-sided approach, Dr. Titipol at the FCCT meeting last Wednesday told the story of a Red Shirt supporter who owns a garage in Ubon Ratchatani. The military commanders have ordered all military personnel at the nearby base to remove stickers advertising her garage from their cars, lest they be identified as “Red Shirt supporters.” Anyone with any UDD or Peua Thai sympathies is seen as the enemy.
It is a “winner takes all” strategy that cannot persist all that long into the future. I predict as the harsh prison sentences (28 years for Lese Majeste; life in prison for arson in Ubon for burning down the provincial hall, which was changed from a one-year prison sentence) and repression of free speech and assembly will further the embitterment and hatred that the Red Shirts already feel.
Eventually, large scale peaceful protests will erupt in places like Khon Kaen and Chiang Mai. They will probably be brutally reppressed by the military regime. Depending upon the number of casualties and mass arrests that result, I believe it is possible that the troops in the north and northeast will eventually disobey orders, and turn their guns on their officers. My experience with past events in Thailand (1973, 1976, 1992) suggest that a violent turn of events is more likely than the indefinite perpetuation of this lengthy military regime. I hope that I am incorrect in this assessment.
Pluralism imperiled in Southeast Asia
I don’t agree. A culture is not based on a propositional logic, it’s not a scientific theory that can be tested. It’s based on motives and symbols with their own history, not causes and effects. The red colour, for example, may have different meanings in different cultures. This meaning can be understood directly if you belongs to the same community with the same culture. To understand other cultures it’s necessary a critical approach that put “in bracket” your own culture. The result can be an enrichment but also, in the worst case, the ascertainment that a dialogue is impossible.
The idea of big a multilingual cultures sounds to me like a cultural dictatorships that kills any difference.
I’m aware that the Todorov’s sentence I mentioned before is too much theoretically oriented and maybe too much related to the Euro (Western)-centric world view. But I found it coherent with the second positive meaning of pluralism described in this article.
Pluralism imperiled in Southeast Asia
The trouble with multiculturalism or pluralism, or whatever you like to call it, is that if one culture says X is right and another says X is wrong, you have to agree with the proposition X is both right and wrong. You have to throw logic to the winds. And while you’re at it you have to throw science to the winds as well. Everybody’s opinion is right. Such fundamental weakness is fatal to any culture.
Better a big single but multilingual culture that allows one to look critically: that embraces the richness and beauty present in all the world’s cultures, and rejects their illogic, their passionate belief without evidence, their intolerance and punitive control, their inequality and injustice, and their environmental destruction. The belief that the only culture one is permitted to criticise is one’s own is silly. Everything must be put to the test.
A state of madness
Brilliant article James, however a word of caution. Don’t holiday in Thailand for a while. The fascists are courting “China” and Article 112 has been completely revived, as a fascist tool.
Pluralism imperiled in Southeast Asia
I was unaware that most of Southeast Asia had pluralism. In the case of Malaysia, I would prefer calling it SEG (sanctified ethnic greed).
Pluralism imperiled in Southeast Asia
Excellent analysis that opened my eyes for many aspects. To support the second meaning of pluralism I would like to mention here a sentence of Todorov, from his essay “Les morales de l’histoire”. I try to translate it: “integration is needed if we want to speak about a complex culture, and not simply coexistence of two autonomous traditions side by side; but the integrating culture (thus the dominant one) should, without losing its identity, enrich itself with the contribution of the integrated culture, discovering its functioning and not the simple evidence”. A non-conflictual coexistence without integration is possible only “with the maximum ignorance of each other” (and this is the first meaning of pluralism).
Ben Anderson: the one and only
The passage I quoted came from Anderson’s preface to “A Preliminary Analysis of the October 1, 1965, Coup in Indonesia”, which was published in 1971 without the preface. The preface, only two or three pages long, sets the scene for that report rather than being specifically a paper on Sukarno.
In another passage, Anderson switches from his first base in the Nagarakrtagama to the wayang: “As the lakon is now being performed in the Capital, the long-awaited civil war, Bratayuda Joyobinangun, is now at an end. The Left Faction has been cut down (uprooted?) to the last or next to last man. In the abandoned Palace, a balding Suyudono bewails the vanishing of his former omnipotence. In the corridors a twittering Durno awaits the vengeance of the victors. The Right Faction have taken control of the contested kingdom, their triumph secured for good and all…”
Suyudono is Sukarno, while Durno is Dr Subandrio. In his “Mythology and the Tolerance of the Javanese”, published in 1965, Anderson had introduced Suyudono (or Sujudana) as ‘King of Ngastina, most powerful and glittering of the ancient mythological Javanese capitals. He is a great monarch, yet fated to destroy himself and his house’. Re Durno (Durna), Anderson writes ‘the tendency in wayang today is to portray him as a half-sinister, half-comic figure, but this is not the older, traditional perspective. He was then Kresna’s great adversary, but with the Gods against him and without Kresna’s divinity’.
The student demonstrators of 1966 who denounced Subandrio as ‘Durno’ were clearly influenced by the latter-day wayang view of that character.
The passages I have quoted are the only ones relating to Sukarno.